that includes a swath of Appalachia, and a United Methodist minister, and he has consistendy led in the polls. Still, Black- well is a formidable campaigner, and he can claim to represent change. "Ohio has for decades been a balanced state and one that has rewarded moder- ates," Mike Curtin, the associate pub- lisher of the Columbus Dispatch, told me. "Look at Mike De Wine" -one of Ohio's two Republican senators. "He began as a prosecutor in a rural county. As he moved up, he progressed from conservatism to moderate conservatism. It's a path trod by many." Party discipline has been equally consistent. For more than a decade, the state Party chairman, Robert Bennett, with the assistance of other Party leaders and wealthy donors, has determined who would run for state- wide offices. Bennett has headed off pri- mary races for the top jobs, and he has enforced the "eleventh commandment;' espoused by Ronald Reagan, that no Re- publican should speak ill of another. This year, however, Bennett failed to avert a gubernatorial primary, and Blackwell, the only successfiù right-wing politician in the state, repeatedly attacked T aft and other Party leaders. "Ken's a lone ranger," Bennett remarked a couple of years ago. Blackwell first declared his candidacy for governor in 1998, four years after winning his first statewide office, as trea- surer. Bennett, who thought that Taft had a better chance of succeeding George V oinovich as governor, persuaded Black- well to run for secretary of state instead. It was not a job that he wanted-his in- terest lay in economic policy. But he won, and four years later Bennett pressed him to stay on for a second term. Once reëlected, he announced that he would run for governor when Taft stepped down, in 2006. His candidacy was not taken seriously until 2004, when the job that he didn't want put him in charge of voting procedures and made him the most important official in the state. The Ohio election was marred by nu- merous irregularities, and whether Black- well discharged his duties impartially and in accordance with the law remains a mat- ter of dispute. Republicans defend his conduct, but Democrats and voting- rights advocates maintain that he deliber- ately suppressed the vote of Democrats and minorities. Dozens of lawsuits and official complaints were filed, and Repre- sentativeJohn Conyers, Jr., of Michigan, and the Democratic staff of the House Ju- diciary Committee launched an investiga- tion, fielding more than fifty thousand complaints from Ohioans. Blackwelfs rulings have thus far stood up in court, but Democrats, who point out that Blackwell simultaneously served as the honorary co- chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio, see a pattern of partisanship in his actions. A month before the registration deadline, Blackwell directed the County Boards of Elections to reject all voter- registration forms not printed on eighty- pound-stock paper. He rescinded the order three weeks later-even his own office didn't have paper that heavy-but in the meantime many voters who tried to register could not. Blackwell also ruled that provisional ballots (those given to voters not found on the rolls) had to be cast in the right precinct, as opposed to simply the right county. Thousands of ----- 1- J --1\/ J , ' Thwarted in Their Attempts to Advance a Runner Against the Visitors, the Players to a Man Strangle All Ambition-That Driving Force WeAl1 So Foolishly Depend Upon provisional ballots were invalidated as a result, and Democrats argued that the order discriminated against low-income voters, who tend to move frequendy, and therefore were more likely to show up at the wrong precinct. Blackwell called the contention prejudiced. "The assumption that minorities and low-income people should be treated as mentally challenged siblings is just insulting," he said. On Election Day, voters in tradition- ally Democratic areas encountered a vari- ety of obstacles, among them Republican challengers at the preåncts, the improper purging of names from voter rolls, and, the most serious, a scarcity of voting ma- chines. In suburban and rural areas, there were plenty of machines, but in urban pre- cincts, where many African-Americans voted, and in other Democratic-leaning precincts, such as those around college campuses, people had to stand in line for as long as ten hours, and many of them just gave up. Mer the election, more irregularities were discovered, among them spoiled ballots, voting-machine errors, provi- sional ballots mistakenly invalidated, and biased sample recounts. Blackwell dismissed most of the complaints as "partisan jibber-jabber" and asserted that none of the Election Day "glitches" were "of a conspiratorial nature, and none of them would have overturned or changed the election results." Blackwell has, however, reignited the controversy by interpreting a new election law with rules on voter registration so restrictive they could halt most registration drives in Ohio. A coalition of six civic groups is suing on the ground that the law will disenfranchise poor and minority voters, and Democrats are protesting that Blackwell should not be overseeing his own election. Blackwell took advantage of the media attention that fall to launch his campaign for the governorship. He spoke out on issues from the sales tax to the Ohio Turnpike Commission, and he led the campaign for Issue One. Taft, V oinovich, and De Wine opposed the amendment, because it seemed to bar domestic-partnership benefits, but Black- well travelled the state denouncing gay marriage. "The notion that a same-sex marriage can carry out the function of procreation or replenishing the human race defies not only human logic but